The tale of my transformation from lethargy and laziness to true health and fitness!

Tag Archives: nutrition

It’s been quite some time since I penned (or typed rather) a blog post. I wish I could give a good excuse, but really, who isn’t busy? I guess the good part is that while I have been busy, it has not affected my commitment to eating right and working out like a madman.

This post will be brief and to the point. One of the thoughts that’s been running through my head lately is the idea that the small things we do each day add up – either positively or negatively. Most Americans strive so hard to live a life of comfort that they often do themselves a physical disservice. We drive around searching for the closest parking space to the store, take the elevator or escalator instead of walking up or down the stairs, eat finger foods because it seems to be the simplest way to eat, wear slip-on shoes, etc., etc., etc.

All these little things surely make us comfortable but certainly don’t do us any benefit from a fitness standpoint. I’m sure you’ve been around someone (hopefully not yourself) who had difficulty breathing after walking up a single flight of stairs. You don’t get into that type of physical condition overnight; but the wrong type of small stuff will add up over time, and the sum often adds up a little nuisance called obesity (among other ~enjoyable~ medical maladies).

A small late night snack here, a small late night snack there, an elevator ride here, a small get-together that certainly must include food (likely unhealthy), a skipped workout, driving somewhere you could walk to… the small stuff truly adds up. Take stock of your daily habits (perhaps even journal them) and evaluate the small stuff that comprises your day. Do the small habits, routines, and decisions of your day guide you to maintaining healthy physical fitness, or do they contribute to a slow, steady decline toward a very unhealthy person that doesn’t become the person you should be?

While you may never develop an appetite for rigorous, intense workouts or have the fortitude to correctly eat almost all the time, you can pay attention to the small stuff and ensure that the small stuff is adding up to a positive outcome.

The journey to fitness and true health is long and slow. Try to change too dramatically and too quickly is often a recipe (pardon the pun) for disaster for most people.

It is important to be well prepared for the journey and to make incremental changes along the way. It is a journey after all and not a sprint.

Part of the process in trying to change from an unhealthy eating lifestyle to a healthy eating lifestyle is (1) the education process, which certainly takes time, and (2) finding recipes that are in alignment with your new eating philosophy. Planning the next week’s meal plan is a great idea, but without recipes to choose from, it can be a real challenge.

At a personal level, our family has always found providing healthy dessert alternatives to be a daunting task. This past weekend, we picked up a book called Raw Desserts. It has a lot of great, healthy dessert ideas.

For the few of you who subscribe to this blog, let me apologize for letting it go dormant for a month. No excuses except I’ve been busy working out, eating right, doing yardwork… basically living life!

In my time away from blogging, I have been watching some documentaries on NetFlix about food, nutrition, weight loss, health, etc. Let me state that I watch these documentaries with an open, inquisitive mind. I do not blindly accept the ideas postulated as gospel truth, but I am open to considering the possibilities.

Food Matters – very interesting conjecture about how eating healthy, raw, and superfoods is the answer to most medical problems instead of looking for another pill to pop. A few ideas that resonated with me: starting every morning with water before anything else (including my daily coffee), eating at least a 51% raw food diet to eliminate toxicity, and high dosage vitamin B or C therapy as a means to treat certain conditions. Previous to watching this documentary, I was not familiary with Max Gerson who promoted the Gerson Therapy and founded the Gerson Institute – fascinating man with revolutionary ideas!

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead – the story of 2 men who directly confronted their unhealthy lifestyles and morbid obesity by adopting a diet of strictly juicing fresh fruits and vegetables. No consumption of anything else besides their daily juice. While adhering to such a strict diet is certainly not for everyone, their ability to stick with it as well as their resulting weight loss and health improvement were nothing short of phenomenal. Amazing that these men spoke to so many people throughout the documentary and presented them with the truth that eating nutritious food can extend and improve quality of life, yet their message was largely ignored. So many people are willing to live lives that ignore or defy this simple truth.

Hungry for Change – documentary that focuses on what exactly goes into the popular food products sold at most grocery stores. Really made me stop and think about sugar consumption and how much sugar we consume today compared to just 100 years ago. Certainly opened my eyes to examining food labels more closely. Don’t trust the trendy slogans on the food packaging!

For me, this is a continuation in my quest to learn more about nutrition, food products, ingredients, super foods and how all of this correlates to the society we live in that allows genetic modification of food, relies on drugs and medications to deal with problems most likely caused by the foods we eat, and places a much lower emphasis on nutrition in comparison to the other ‘important’ things of life.

Next up for me, I am considering joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) this summer. For me, it seems to be a fantastic way to regularly get fresh fruits and vegetables that are grown in a way that I believe in. Not only will I have greater trust in the produce I am eating (and getting great benefit from it), I will be locally supporting farms that believe in the growth and harvesting of organic, hormone-free, GMO-free fruits and vegetables. Certainly, risks are involved with such a decision, which is why I am going to research this idea further. Local Harvest is a great resource for explaining the pros and cons of such a decision.

If you have seen any of the listed documentaries or have others to share or have an opinion about CSA’s, I would love to get your input. Please comment!

The title lists a very simple equation, and yet the solution seems to evade so many people. Let me write it out again:

True Fitness = Hard Work + Proper Nutrition

It’s not to say that Hard Work is more important than Nutrition – I just happened to list them alphabetically. The opposite is probably true that proper nutrition will benefit you more long-term than hard work if you could only pick one. By Hard Work, I mean strenuous, physically-exerting exercise. And by Proper Nutrition, I mean eating foods that are actually good for the body (that’s a dissertation in itself) and getting proper sleep and hydration.

I often run into people that I haven’t seen in awhile, and they typically remark how much thinner and more fit I look. Of course, they want to know what I’ve been doing to achieve my level of fitness. When I tell them about my workouts and changed eating habits, their peaked interest usually dwindles. It amazes me that practical living and hard work are a major turnoff to people. I mean, when you see how hard people will work to live in a certain community or get to a certain position at work, it’s obvious that hard work is not a foreign concept to them; and they seem to have enough common sense that they would seriously evaluate the food their body intakes.

Let me reiterate:

True Fitness = Hard Work + Proper Nutrition

There are no quick fixes or magic potions that will turn you from a lump of dough to a fit, vibrant person. It will take hard, strenuous work. I have stated it before, but I am a strong advocate of working out with kettlebells and bodyweight exercise.

The benefits are clear:

You will get strong

You don’t need much space

You don’t need to go to a gym

You don’t need to make much of a financial commitment

You can accomplish a lot of hard work in a fairly short period of time

It will take some effort to research the foods you eat, read the labels, understand what ingredients/foods/medicines are good or bad for you, make well-informed food purchases, plan and prepare nutritious meals, etc.

Again, the benefits are clear:

If you are overweight, you will lose weight

You will be healthier with a stronger immune system

You will have more natural energy (this will fit perfectly into your strenuous workouts)

You will be likely live longer

You will maintain the weight your body was designed to support and your joints will thank you profusely for that

The solution to true fitness couldn’t really be this simple, could it? If you read most of the trendy health and fitness magazines, then to them, the answer is no. There’s always a new gimmick workout or diet (or even diet pill). There’s a huge industry devoted to the millions of people who keep futilely chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Decide today to be equally committed to both components of the solution, and you will be the better for it. Don’t expect many others to join you, but hey, you are living your life in your body. Only you can directly change and affect you.

As I mentioned in previous posts, I could not have cared less about the healthiness of the food that I ate. Quantity certainly trumped quality.

When I was going through a self-discovery phase early last year and examining the foods that I ate, I realized that I didn’t really know most of what I was consuming. Sure, I got chicken from the store, but how was the chicken raised and fed? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I certainly liked the taste of something as unnutritional as Pop Tarts, but they tasted good to me so I ate them. I don’t want to bore you with what I ate compared to what I eat now…

I started to examine the ingredients found in the food products that I ate. In fact, I was that guy standing in the grocery store looking at the back of a food product and googling it on my Android (sorry, Apple fans). I still do that on occasion. I also watched a lot of documentaries about food on NetFlix – obviously, I digested this information with a grain of salt (pun intended), but the fact of the matter was, I was eating a lot of things that were either genetically modified, produced in an inhumane or unhealthy way, or was just generally unhealthy.

Of course it was eye-opening to truly understand how bad things like fructose (or high fructose corn syrup), ‘natural’ and artificial flavorings, nitrates, grain-fed cows producing milk and beef, MSG and other seemingly innocuous ingredients are for you. I became determined to do my best to start understanding ingredient levels, learn what is truly good for human consumption, and slowly migrate away from the bad foods. It is clear to me (remember this is my opinion) that most major food producing companies are only interested in profit to the point of adding ingredients to food products that serve to addict and create regular, repeat purchases even at the detriment to the health of the consumer.

It is kind of crazy to think about because I doubt that our predecessors had to worry about how their food was produced, packaged, genetically modified, etc. Regardless, it’s a fact of life that we do, and for all the bad companies mass producing relatively unhealthy food products for the masses, there are just as many (sometimes the same companies) producing ‘healthy’ alternative food products that turn out to not be so healthy when you truly dig into the ingredients. There is so much information and angles to consider with this topic that 1 blog post certainly can’t even begin to scratch the surface.

All that to say this – know what you eat. I heard a good rule of thumb – don’t eat foods with ingredients that you cannot pronounce. No, I haven’t built a bunker and started a life of isolation away from society, but I am fortunate to live in a state (the good old northwest suburbs of Philly) where there are still (for now) many farms that are committed to values such as non-GMO, organic, grassfed, free range, etc. I am able to buy dairy products such as cheese, raw milk (that’s another deep dive discussion), and eggs that come from farms within 45 minutes from my house. I have started to make it a point to buy free-range, grassfed beef or free-range chicken.

I haven’t made any radical changes in my life – and my checkbook certainly hasn’t grown by leaps and bounds. Generally speaking, here’s a list of what I try to adhere to:

I know what I eat

I avoid high consumption of fructose and attempt to avoid high fructose corn syrup entirely

I buy local as often as I can, especially dairy and meats (support local products and know where they come from) – I don’t want the hormones, nitrates, or anything like that

I am ok with eating smaller portions since I know that the food product is better for me

Obviously, horribly unhealthy tings like soda are no go (diet soda is even worse – it amazes me how many people drink it)

I have made slow, incremental changes to the ingredients I add to my coffee (goodbye flavored creamer)

Limit my intake of breads, grains, and corn

Eat Greek yogurt every day (I do not swear off dairy completely like some people do)

For the most part, avoid fruit juices (the only juice I let my kids drink is unfiltered, pasteurized organic apple juice)

Do a meal list every week and stick to it – it will help you better plan your grocery shopping and eating more healthy

Don’t be afraid to be different from a lot of your friends

There are other things that I can’t think of at the moment, but the important thing is, always continue to learn (I might change my mind about a food product or ingredient that I previously thought was healthy or unhealthy) – (1. learn from others, 2. try new foods and recipes, 3. research food types and various ingredients, 4. understand how the different food products are produced and where they come from, etc.)

Well, that’s enough for now – even for a guy, I can talk a blue streak. If there’s anything that I’ve learned in the last year or so, you can’t really take this topic too seriously. Here’s to a healthy 2013 eating food the way it was meant to be produced and consumed!

One thing that is evident as the playoffs have begun and continue to the Super Bowl, the teams and players comprising the playoff contenders are committed to the perfecting of their craft and the pursuit of excellence.

Granted, these men are partially motivated by multi-million dollar contacts, but the playoffs (of any sport really) bring out that extra level of commitment and competitive spirit.

The lesson to be gained is this: whatever your goals may be… getting stronger, losing weight, breaking through a certain plateau, eating healthier, etc., approach that goal with the same perseverance exemplified by these NFL players and coaches. Relentlessly pursue the things that you want to achieve.

Although my eating habits over the past few days were a little out of character in terms of health and nutrition, I controlled myself to the point of where I don’t feel a need to make any rash New Year’s resolutions.

Notwithstanding, I do have a personal goal of accomplishing more physically in 2013 than I did in 2012. 2012 was a year of transformation for me, including dramatic weight loss and some strength gains and metabolic conditioning. Now that I am relatively at a weight that I want to maintain and can manage, I plan to more aggressively increase my overall strength.

As an aside, Strong First is a great website that is dedicated to the strength building. The premise of this site is that as you become stronger (with a focus solely on that – hence strong first), the more fit you will become. Interesting food for thought as most people who are trying to go from unfit to fit strictly focus on weight loss and not actually increasing their strength.

In 2012, I experienced the most significant weight loss when I strictly counted every calorie that I consumed for a period of 100 straight days. I used an app on my phone called My Fitness Pal. While I honestly don’t aspire to track my caloric intake for the entirety of 2013, I am planning on continuing to use this app to track my caloric intake for the first week of each month. Don’t forget to stick to what has helped you achieve success!

Today’s first concentrated workout of the new year will include the following:

30 burpees (with a pushup) – for a warmup

100 kettlebell swings (likely with a 53 lb kb)

100 kettlebell goblet squats (35 lb kb)

100 kettlebell clean and press (35 lb kb)

100 kettlebell snatches (35 lb kb)

Not sure yet on how I will break them down set-wise, but that is today’s goal.

With workouts of these nature, the reality is that it is more of a test of the the mind and will than the body itself. Training your body to push past what your mind tells you it can or cannot do has incredible rewards and will help you push past barriers or limitations.

For 2013, I am committed to getting stronger while continuing to stick to the basics that were the foundation of my transformational 2012. What will you commit to in 2013?

I recently went to the dentist to get in a cleaning before year-end. My dentist and I were discussing my love/hate relationship with flossing – or my lack of interest sometimes in flossing. In her opinion, the best time to floss is at night because that is when your mouth is most inactive and getting the least amount of oxygen flow as you sleep.

At any rate, she said, don’t wait until right before you go to sleep to floss because you will probably be too tired at that point to do it properly if at all. Do it earlier in the evening. That got me thinking about late night snacking and the struggle that can be for some people.

Perhaps this is something that could potentially be a small help to people who struggle with late night snacking. Take some time early in the evening (maybe 8 or 9 PM) to completely floss and brush your teeth (oh, and you can skip the mouthwash too although that’s another story/theory for another day). With your mouth feeling so fresh and clean, you just may be inclined to let it stay that way until the next day and avoid eating something just because you feel an urge to eat.

If you have any tips or ideas for combatting late night snacking, add a comment and share.

Unless you completely isolate yourself from society, it is hard to avoid all of the festivities (including parties and food) at this time of the year. While everyone will approach it differently, it certainly won’t hurt to have a game plan for enjoying the season without gaining 20 pounds.

While hiding in a hole for a month or so is an option, it certainly isn’t practical. There are few who can adhere to a rigid 100% healthy diet all the time. For those who can, I applaud them. For the majority who can’t, have a plan in place. Letting go and eating everything in November and December and then making a New Year’s resolution to join a gym to work off the unwanted pounds is not a good plan, in my opinion.

So for the festivities that you do attend, have a plan in place.

If it’s a lunchtime event, eat a light breakfast and dinner.

If it’s an evening function, eat a light breakfast and lunch.

While at the event, have a goal of limiting yourself to 1 plate of food.

Make a point of focusing on conversing with others over eating. They will appreciate the fact that you are not stuffing your face while talking to them, and you will appreciate the fact that you are not overloading your stomach with food.

Take a few minutes and search online for some basic caloric facts about common party foods, including desserts. Armed with this information, you should have at least a little pause as your peruse the food.

Don’t stop working out… maybe even add 1 workout to your week. Just don’t lapse into the bad idea that a lot of working out will compensate for eating extremely unhealthy food. Good exercise and bad food do not equate. To be sure, it may be difficult to completely avoid unhealthy food, but manage the intake!

So… don’t hide in a hole. Go have fun, celebrate the time of year, and go to some parties. Just don’t forget to have a plan and to be practical!